What’s your best, happiest or nicest Christmas memory?

[OrigamiPenguinArmy]

I’ll admit this is an unashamed attempt to start a warm and fuzzy thread because I feel we need more warm and fuzzy right now.

Mine would be firstly actually seeing Father Christmas flying through the sky on his sleigh. I’d have been around six, I was coming out of the church carol service on Christmas Eve into a cold and frosty evening. My grandfather pointed up into the clear sky and said he thought he’d just seen Father Christmas. I looked up and I swear to this day I saw the silhouette of the sleigh pass high overhead. It was pure magic.

My second would be many years later. I had a difficult birth with DD and ended up staying in hospital over Christmas. On Christmas Day there was hardly anyone on the ward, they brought Christmas dinner to the day room but only DH and I were in their and we sat in the quiet and ate this bog standard catering meal, which somehow tasted like the best Christmas dinner ever, with our tiny little, much longed for newborn daughter in her crib beside us.

This is going to sound weird, but bear with me.
My dad died mid December one year, a long time ago, so Christmas that year didn’t really happen. I was in my early 20s. 12 months later, DM, DSis and I were invited to spend Christmas with some very long standing family friends in deepest rural East Anglia. DSis and I congregated back “home” in time to leave London on Christmas Eve. The journey should have been 4 hours. We broke down on the M11 - in such a precarious position we were pulled off the road by the police and had to wait for the AA in the police car. The AA man turned up, looked at the car, declared it unrepairable and said he’d tow us home. There was no food at home, no decorations, and really, for the first year, no Dad. Then, amazingly, Otto the AA man, rang his manager and gave him the sob story of “Mrs Bike and her children...” and got DM’s cover upgraded for a week. He towed us to Cambridge services (where we are fried eggs and watched Clifhanger with the young Kiwi chap serving no other customers), another truck picked us up from there. Eventually, 6 hours later than planned, we arrived at our friends’ cottage. They’d stayed up (it was past midnight), kept food warm, and greeted us with open arms, and the love and affection of 40 years friendship. Those friends and Otto the AA man made that first “proper” Christmas without dad.

So, if you know an Italian chap called Otto, who was an AA rescue driver/mechanic on the M11 about 25-30 years ago, give him a hug from me.

Sorry about that. I promise that I can do paragraphs!

Putting the Christmas tree up for mum on the day of our Grandfather’s funeral just before Christmas. We came home earlier than her and dashed around putting lights on it and her favourite ornaments etc.
I can still see her face now twenty odd years later coming up the drive that dark night in December and being so happy we’d made her smile for the first time in a long while.

From early teens i used to go with my dad, long since passed away, to pick out a tree. He was a very busy doctor who ran a department at a state hospital (not in UK) but he had all the patience in the world to take me from one place to the next, checking out all the trees. Then we'd get it home and put it up and I'd get to work decorating. In one house it was about 7' but in their last house it was about 10'. I don't know when it went from a family thing to just us two, but it is a very precious memory I hold dear. He died 12 years ago last week.

A pretend sleigh ride in the garden, when I was about five or six. One Christmas Eve, we children were bundled up in our coats, gloves and wellies. We were then blindfolded, told we were at the north pole, lifted into the wheelbarrow, and pushed round the garden to the sound of sleigh bells. Even though I knew it was pretend, it was a magical memory!

First christmas with DH. We moved 2 days before into our new house to discover that the pipes had burst and the ceiling had fallen down in the dining room. A plasterer blessedly came to slap the ceiling up and we had the heating on the dehumidifer and there was water pouring down the walls on the inside from the wet new plaster.

We had goose, and sat huddled in front of the tv on the carpet as our furniture had not arrived and everything was in storage. And we drank too much.

It was blissful because it was ours.

Yesterday, 19 month old DD helping me to decorate the tree We have waited so long for her and I felt such happiness and contentment.

I am NOT crying. Nope. No siree.

Love the story about Otto the AA man.

@Splann

One of my best memories is driving round delivering cards with my mum. We used to live high up in the Pennines and my memory is of snow in the headlights, singing carols with my mum and visiting lots of old relatives who always welcomed us with treats!

Another lovely one is me and my sisters turning off all the lights except the Christmas tree ones and lying on our backs under the tree looking up through it. The tree used to smell divine but the slightest movement used to cause pine needles to fall on us. I get my children to do this now.

I keep on having to remind myself that most of my Christmas memories are of being with the family, not the presents, big treats or even the food. Small traditions and comforting things mean more that piles of presents.

I used to do this lying under the tree! With multicoloured red 70s lights that were like little Victorian lanterns ... none of your tasteful white LEDs!

I remember when I was around 6 or 7 we woke up really early, got super Excited came out of the bedroom and noticed it had snowed all night, I remember the presents were forgotten and we quickly got dressed and headed to the green next to the flats. That was the one time I remember it snowing on Christmas Day in london. We had great fun and I remember we didn’t open the presents, we took them all to my Nan’s house as we had to be there early. That’s the only they hadn’t been ripped open straightaway.

I have lots of random little happy Christmas memories but I couldn't tell you when most of them took place.

Our dog had pups on Christmas eve one year then we had a white Christmas too - I swear I thought it was magical!

Spending Christmas Eve with my Man, looking for all the Xmas trees in the windows in the journey home and the excitement knowing that FC was coming that night. Seeing my Mum's face as she enjoyed watching us open our stockings.

Nan

On Christmas morning we had breakfast with ducks waddling past the patio doors as they unwrapped all their presents.

Did the ducks have a lot of presents?

Santa drives around our village in a sleigh every year. The kids must have been 6 and 4 and they so believed in him that year. As he drove past they were jumping and waving, and they ran the length of the road with him, in their Christmas jammies and bare feet!

DH ran alongside them and I stood watching the three of them with tears streaming down my face. That little snapshot was basically everything I'd wanted since meeting DH at 17.

The year my son was born on Christmas Eve. We didn't have any guests or go anywhere, it was just us, our toddler and the baby plus the midwife popping in. Christmas dinner was verrrry slow and casual. We put DS in a moses basket under the Christmas tree and joked about Santa leaving him as a present.

And it was perfect.

My youngest child was born just before Christmas. I’d had a rough pregnancy and an emergency c-section and was exhausted.
But I have such lovely memories of lying in bed cuddling and feeding her, watching Christmas films with my 3 yr old while DH brought me lots of cups of tea and mince pies. DD was a chilled out, happy baby and i it was just such a lovely, peaceful, magical time.

Singing in the choir at a wedding a few days before Christmas. We were all paid at the end from a bank bag of notes and coins. The youngest ones were really thrilled. An hour or 2 later in the afternoon near-darkness I went to spend the choir money on a real Christmas tree (age: early 20s).

I spent one memorable Christmas in the Cook Islands. My partner and I were riding around the island on a scooter and saw a sign in someone's garden advertising Xmas dinner for the following night. So this lady hosted us in her beautiful garden, there were maybe 4 tables of people in total, it was warm night and there were fairy lights everywhere. She was an expat and just liked cooking and hosting people so apparently did this every year. The Xmas menu had a Cook Islands twist to it - think breadfruit lasagne and tropical fruit dessert. It was absolutely delicious and the lady was so friendly. It was a very unconventional Xmas but I really enjoyed it.

I'm sobbing reading these. What a lovely thread.
I hope I'm making Christmases magical for my dc so they have little things like this to reflect back on when they're older.
Love the story of the AA man. Tonight when I get home I'm going to lie under the tree with my dc!

As an older teenager, A group of us used to go carol singing around the villages on the 23 and 24th to raise money for charity. We were a mixed age group of sibling clusters who had friendships within and across year groups. We were all involved in music through our school. Over time we gradually left home for university, but we would still get back together to do the carolling. We’d go along the same roads year after year, I’d love that over the years the same parents would be waiting for us with the kids as part of their traditions- seeing those children in their PJs all wide eyed and excited as our visit meant Christmas was here. We’d also call in on our family homes, and some of ex teachers, where there’d be interludes of eating and drinking before we’d head outside again.. It was like a lovely pub crawl. We’d end up back at my parents house late ion Christmas eve night, where my mum would make hotdogs, chips and enormous amounts of mince pies.
All sounds a bit weird now for teenagers. But it was magical.
Years later now and I still have a “sound” memory of that dampened noise of us walking through the snow under a crystal clear night, catching up on each other’s news, the sound of 4 part harmony carols and being in that perfect moment of happiness

Going to Lapland on Christmas Day. It was completely magical and we still talk about it now, even though it happened 20 years ago!

It was a few years ago and the first time in years the family had been together. It was the first time we were all supposed to meet my sil who had a flight very early Christmas morning, but she missed her flight. My brother was absolutely gutted and Christmas seemed canceled for him and we were all trying to cheer him up.
However she managed to get another flight to an airport 4 hours away. Dbs best mate drove all the way to pick her up and back again. What an absolute legend. When she showed up at the door it was like a love actually moment. It was already early evening by then so we were all quite merry. I'm sure my sil was a bit overwhelmed by us all drunk and dancing around the kitchen singing her name but she stayed in the family and went on to marry db so we hopefully weren't too bad.
It was such a lovely Christmas because everyone was there in the end and it wasn't about gifts but about all coming together as a family. We haven't had a Christmas where all siblings and partners have been there since (we all live in different countries)

MrsIronfoundersson (great name) - the 70s lantern lights! I was just talking about those to DH the other night.

My Aunt always had a couple of packs that went round quite a fat (fake) tree and she also used to put Angel Hair on it. Their light diffusion was so gorgeous. I have a really clear memory of them. I've been wanting them (without expecting to find them) for a few years but I really do want them now!

Even if you could get the little lantern shades I reckon you could put them on a modern set.

Otto the AA man should be a Christmas ad. That's a wonderful story.

My gran had those lantern lights too. And my other gran had the Cinderella carriage lights.